Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology is a technology that allows smart terminals (e.g., personal computers (PCs), tablet computers, smartphones, etc.) to connect together wirelessly. Almost all smartphones, tablet computers and laptops support Wi-Fi Internet access technology. The Wi-Fi technology is a most widely used wireless network transmission technology. Wi-Fi networks are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards.
In a Wi-Fi network, all communications are implemented through an access point (AP). The AP provides a bridge from a wireless client to a local area network. In a wireless local area network (WLAN), the AP can also implement frame switching from wireless to wired network, or from wired to wireless network. The Wi-Fi technology uses 802.11 standards. In 802.11 standards, there are three common frames: management frames, control frames and data frames. A beacon frame is one of the management frames in IEEE 802.11 standards based WLANs.
The beacon frame contains all the information about the network. Beacon frames are transmitted periodically to announce the presence of an AP. According to IEEE 802.11 standards, a Wi-Fi AP broadcasts periodically the beacon frames to announce the presence of the AP. Wi-Fi devices can listen to the beacon frames within a signal transmitting range, thereby determining whether to join a certain Wi-Fi AP network. IEEE 802.11 std-2007 P80-P81 defines the standard format of the beacon frame, as shown in FIG. 1. As one of the wireless management frames, the beacon frames are periodically broadcasted to wireless clients by the AP. Each beacon frame contains information of a wireless service announced by the AP. After the wireless client receives the beacon frame, the wireless client analyzes the information of the wireless service contained in the beacon frame and uploads the information to an operation system, such that a user can select the wireless service according to actual needs.
With the development of Wi-Fi technology, more and more terminal devices use Wi-Fi technology for network connection. Both in a home environment and in public places, the Wi-Fi devices can be seen everywhere. In existing technologies, each Wi-Fi device can only be connected to an AP through configuring connection information. If multiple Wi-Fi devices produced by a same manufacturer/vendor want to connect to the Wi-Fi AP network of the same manufacturer/vendor, each Wi-Fi device needs to be configured with the connection information and the Wi-Fi devices are respectively connected to the Wi-Fi AP network. The network connection is not easy and fast, and a centralized control cannot be quickly implemented. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a system and method for multiple Wi-Fi devices automatically connecting to a specified AP.
The disclosed systems and methods for multiple Wi-Fi devices automatically connecting to a specified AP are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems.